Epernay, January 13, 2024 - Total Champagne shipments in 2023 account for 299 million bottles, down 8.2% from the previous year. After three extraordinary years, Champagne is back to pre-Covid shipment levels.
With 297.3 million bottles in 2019, sales had fallen the following year by 18% during the pandemic, and then bounced back by 33% in the following two years to reach over 325 million bottles by the end of 2022.
In 2023, France is down by 8.2% with 127 million bottles. The domestic market has suffered more from inflation, compared to export markets, which has weighed on household budgets throughout the year.
Exports are down 8.2% from 2022, with 172 million bottles, but are well above their 2019 level (156 million bottles) ; and now account for more than 57% of total sales, compared to 45% ten years ago. The overstocking by distributors, for fear of shortages in 2022, partly explains the decline between 2022 and 2023 results.
Despite the drop in volume, the increase in value for cuvées, especially within the export markets, has enabled the appellation to maintain its sales above 6 billion euros.
Maxime Toubart, president of the Syndicat Général des Vignerons and co-president of the Comité Champagne, "welcomes this return to market stability. Champagne is a protected appellation produced within a delimited area and governed by strict rules that make it impossible to sustain strong growth in volume over the long term".
For David Chatillon, president of the Union des Maisons de Champagne and co-president of the Comité Champagne, "the decline was to be expected - but with the value maintained, Champagne is still optimistic for the future, whilst remaning sensitive to the geopolitical context and the state of the global economy".
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